Euthanasia: Do People Have a Right to Die

“As human beings, we are endowed with the freedom of choice, and we cannot shuffle off our responsibility upon the shoulders of God or nature. We must shoulder it ourselves. It is our responsibility”

Arnold J. Toynbee.

Do people actually have a right to choose to die? Birth and death are natural events that are happening in life of all of us. We all will die one day, this day may come unexpectedly. People die in different conditions, some die in accidents, some die because of diseases, and some commit suicide. People are born not being asked to be born or not, however people can choose to die earlier, why will not they plan their death? From early times, people meeting different and difficult circumstances of life ended their lives by suicide; fortunately in the early 20th century euthanasia appeared. Do we have the right to choose death? Of course yes, who said no? If we are free to make our own choices of how to live, we should also be able to make our own choices of how to die. People want to die for various reasons, such as severe illness, severe depression. No one will forbid us to die, because this day will come sooner or later, if not with peaceful death, then with other form of death. Therefore, people invented euthanasia or in other words ‘mercy killing’.

According to Peter Singer (2011) euthanasia is a ‘physician-assisted suicide’ or ‘death with dignity’. Another explanation of euthanasia gave us authors of the article ‘Euthanasia: a Healthcare Debate from a Greek-Turkish Perspective’, “Euthanasia is the practice of ending an individual’s life in order to relieve them from an incurable disease or unbearable suffering. The term euthanasia is derived from the Greek word for ‘good death’ and originally referred to as ‘intentional killing’” ( Patelarou, Vardavas, Fioraki, Alegakis, Dafermou, & Ntzilepi, 2009).

Euthanasia has three types: voluntary, involuntary and non-voluntary. There are countries that allow euthanasia such as Canada, some states of USA, Switzerland, Belgium, Netherlands, Luxemburg and Columbia. But what if euthanasia would be allowed everywhere, does it mean that many people would like to die at the first opportunity and would often resort to euthanasia. Thus, euthanasia should be allowed in very exceptional cases and considered only voluntary based euthanasia. I consider other forms of euthanasia are morally wrong and for me these forms are the real murder, since the patient who going to be killed is not capable to agree for death. According to Singer ‘Voluntary euthanasia is euthanasia carried out at the voluntary request of the person killed, who must be, when making the request, mentally competent and adequately informed’ (Peter Singer, 2011, p. 157).

As I mentioned before, people can choose to die, but they have to do that voluntarily, meaning that no one should force the individual to die, even if it is for the sake of good of the individual.

It is better to accept death in the case of an incurable disease than to suffer and be a burden to the family, some people say that it’s better than to lie down for years, bedridden, to endure pain and torture relatives; patient who wants euthanasia would not like to lead life and bring neither financial nor emotional difficulties to his relatives.

Of course it is hard to watch when the closest person suffers. Those who have not encountered this problem are hard to understand; but nevertheless euthanasia is acceptable only under the condition of tight control over the conduct of this procedure, therefore it is necessary to legally legalize it so that euthanasia does not become a legalized murder. Euthanasia can be recognized as a human right, but there is a danger of abuse and sabotage, in particular by medical staff: fraud and illegal actions of doctors, death ordered by third parties, etc.

Yes, although there are fears that there may be abuses. It is important here who, under what circumstances and in what way will do it; it is necessary to clearly consider a mechanism for protecting a person from possible criminal encroachments on his life under the pretext of a “worthy death”

The decision of individuals to die is also a part of natural selection, the strongest survives. Peter Singer (2011) found that “the principle of respect for autonomy tells us to allow rational agents to live their own lives according to their own autonomous decisions, free from coercion or interference; but if rational agents should autonomously choose to die, then respect for autonomy will lead us to assist them to do as they choose” (p. 170).

There are people who were died by euthanasia:

Hugo Claus was a Belgian author and poet; he suffered from Alzheimer and asked to be euthanized in Belgium, in hospital Antwerp on 19th of March in 2008. He wanted to die with dignity.

Another one was Edward Brongersma, he was a Dutch activist and a defender of the rights of pedophiles. “During his life he worked to have the legal age of consent for homosexual males lowered to 16, which was the age of consent for heterosexual couples at the time” (Famous People Who Died of Euthanasia). He had developed heart problems and it led to decision to euthanize himself in 1998, later after his death a collection of child pornography was found in his home.

Nancy Crick was an Australian woman. The reason why she wanted to die was from the very painful scar tissue in her bowels left over from cancer surgery. Even she was actually cancer free, the pain was torturing her and made her life hell.

Bibliography

1. http://www.internationaljournalofcaringsciences.org/docs/31_Thofanidis_original_9_1.pdf
2. https://e-course.auca.kg/pluginfile.php/149970/mod_resource/content/3/8.%20F.%20M.%20Kamm%2C%20A%20Right%20to%20Choose%20Death%3F.pdf
3. https://e-course.auca.kg/pluginfile.php/149961/mod_resource/content/1/0.%20Peter%20Singer%2C%20Practical%20Ethics%2C%203rd%20edition.pdf
4. https://www.ranker.com/list/famous-people-who-died-of-euthanasia/reference